Craig McDonald about his new novel:

DEATH IN THE FACE: THE YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE FACTOR

(Caution: Mild spoilers ahead for the James Bond novel and film, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.)

In 1962, a gravely ill Ian Fleming went to Japan to research what would result in his penultimate James Bond novel, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.

Typical of Fleming, he planned for himself a macabre itinerary he hoped would showcase the stranger sides of Japan that might in turn inform his novel. He went in the company of two journalists with Asian expertise (more on them later).

The resulting book is one of the darker, more doom-laden of the James Bond novels, almost gothic in atmosphere, and a world away from the resulting 1967 film adaptation which became the first Bond film to jettison the majority of its Fleming inspiration’s plot.”